


consider the hairpin turn

by viverella



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Academy Era, Character Study, Falling In Love, Friends to Lovers, M/M, No Plot/Plotless, Purple Prose, Relationship Study, Road Trips, Slice of Life, Starfleet Academy, Vignette, a whoooooole lot of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:59:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24744964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viverella/pseuds/viverella
Summary: The Earth turns, the months pass, and Leonard and Jim hit the road. They don’t always get to where they need to be, but Leonard finds what he’s looking for in the end anyways.
Relationships: James T. Kirk/Leonard "Bones" McCoy
Comments: 23
Kudos: 81





	consider the hairpin turn

**Author's Note:**

> *inhales sharply* I LIVE ! it’s literally been almost three years since I last wrote mckirk fic and even longer since I actually _finished_ one but if quarantine 2020 has given me one good thing it’s lots of Ideas and all the time in the world to stew on them till something actually comes out of it. anyway I’ve always loved this poem and for whatever reason, it’s been constantly on my mind lately and this _vibe_ just popped into my head so please take this mess of purple prose. some of these vignettes are more plotty than others and only about half of them actually match with the lines of the poem they’re paired with, and really, on the whole, do I actually have any idea what this is about? do I have any idea how I wrote almost 10k words’ worth of fic about basically nothing at all? absolutely not. but hopefully this is still...... something lmao
> 
> it’s been such a long time since I’ve written these two I really hope I didn’t completely butcher the characterization, because honestly I have no idea anymore, but I hope this is at least somewhere in the vicinity of being in character. I’ve also definitely taken liberties with the canon timeline of things so just uh. don’t think too hard about that, yeah?
> 
> title(s) borrowed from “you are jeff” by richard siken
> 
> enjoy!!

**_i. you’re in a car with a beautiful boy_**

In the spring of their first year at the Academy, Jim takes Leonard and makes him drop everything and pack his bags and drive across the country for a full week, like Leonard’s the one who doesn’t know when to call it quits, like Leonard’s the one who doesn’t have it in him to let go for even a moment or two. It’s spring break, Jim insists, and Leonard almost laughs, wondering if Jim even knows what it means to take a break, but he tosses a duffel bag into the back seat of the old, used car Jim’s spent the last handful of months lovingly restoring and lets himself be whisked away to wherever it is Jim has decided the magic resides anyways. 

It’s a warm year, the call of summer reaching out to them even in mid-spring, and they drive with the top down, wind kicking up their hair and carrying along the smell of dry dirt and clean air and sunshine, and Jim tunes the radio to old classics and hums softly, one hand dangling over the side of the car, the other on the steering wheel. They visit national parks and natural landmarks, see tall geysers and wide canyons and stretches of wood so deep that it almost seems like the rest of the world ceases to exist. Leonard lives with the feel of damp earth under his feet and freckles pressing into his darkening skin and a kind of wonder that Jim and Jim alone manages to draw out of him. 

( _Look, here’s the tallest redwood tree in the country. Look, here’s the Milky Way, brighter than you’ve ever seen it. Look, here’s where the land meets the sea, and here, and here._ )

Sunlight flashes off of Jim’s sunglasses as they wind their way through the back roads of the country, and Leonard curls his legs up in the passenger seat, leaning against the armrest and watching as the warm light bathes Jim’s hair gold. Leonard finds his breath catching in his throat sometimes, looking over at Jim against the backdrop of sprawling fields or the glitter of bright sunlight off the Pacific, at the sharp line of his jaw, the soft curve of the small, semi-smile he wears on his face, unburdened and unwound after the focused handful of weeks of too much pressure at the Academy that’s made up the stretch of time leading up to this break, all eyes on him, Starfleet’s golden boy returning home. They drive for days and see some of the most beautiful places in the country, and Leonard finds himself thinking sometimes, despite everything he’s always believed about himself, that maybe he’s starting to prefer just being on the road, the rest of the world fading into a blur of colors and sound around them, like if they never stopped again, maybe that’d be okay. 

He’s twenty-nine years old, just a little more than half a year into his new life at Starfleet, and between growing up in rural Georgia and the bone-chilling fear he carries with him of traveling in anything without wheels on the ground, he’s already seen so many large swathes of the country, has driven down so many of its long highways, through so many of its winding pathways through various backwoods. But as he and Jim leave San Francisco and the gleaming bay behind them in the dust to find somewhere new and unknown, he feels a little like he’s experiencing it all for the first time. The world as Jim shows it to him, one stop at a time, seems bigger somehow, fuller, like there really remains a frontier to be explored somehow, right here, right now. Jim smiles at him sometimes, thrilled by a stunning view from a cliff overlooking the ocean or the warm washes of pinks and oranges and purples of an especially striking sunset, and Leonard thinks to himself that despite everything he left behind him in Georgia, all that loss and the splintered wreckage of what used to be his entire world, maybe this is when his real life finally begins. 

**_ii. and he won’t tell you that he loves you, but he loves you_ **

“Hey Bones,” Jim says quietly to Leonard one night.

They’re lying in a field of grass up in the Headlands overlooking the Golden Gate, and the great expanse of the night sky stretches over them like a tapestry. It’s chilly for May, even by San Francisco’s standards, but they’re bundled up and squished together on a soft blanket, and Leonard doesn’t feel cold at all. Jim’s spent the night pointing out constellations and telling Leonard all the old myths that people from centuries ago dreamed up like Leonard hasn’t heard it all before, and Leonard lets him, listens to the quiet rumble of his voice over the faint sound of waves crashing against the shoreline below and the hum of distant traffic and the wind whipping through the hills. It’s been a long week, Leonard thinks, but here, huddled in their little bubble of the universe, Jim’s motorcycle waiting a handful of feet away for when they’re ready to return to the world of the living, none of that seems to matter. All that matters is this, Jim’s laugh in his ear as Leonard makes up stories for the figures Jim points to in the sky. And this, Jim’s shoulder pressed against his, warm and steady. And this, Jim’s bright eyes as he peers up at the heavens like he could find the answer to anything and everything out there. 

“Hmm?” Leonard hums. The wind kicks a stray leaf against his hand and he shakes it off. 

“Did you mean it,” Jim asks, and the way he says it sounds like he’s asking something secret and private, something the rest of the world isn’t quite allowed to know, “When you said that you never wanted to be stationed on a starship?”

Leonard sighs because they’ve had this conversation before, because Jim brings it up every so often like clockwork, late at night when he’s having a bad day or when he’s tired and pensive or when he’s trying to distract himself from something bigger, something realer. Leonard sighs but doesn’t mean it, because it’s a question like a safety blanket. Jim says, _did you mean it_ , and Leonard hears all the years of loneliness trying to find a home. 

“Jim, you know I have a thing about flying,” Leonard murmurs, like he always does. 

Next to him, Jim rolls over onto his stomach, folding his arms in front of him and resting his cheek on them to look at Leonard. His bright eyes reflect the faint light from the city and the stars above, sharp and devastating even under the cover of night, and it’s times like this that Leonard is reminded of how painfully young Jim is to have seen and felt everything that he has. Jim is twenty-three and he carries a heaviness in the set of his shoulders that he shouldn’t have to know for decades, if ever. Leonard looks away and up at the sky again, searching, chest aching. 

“I know,” Jim says softly, almost a whisper. “I know.” 

In the distance, the whir of the city offers a low buzz of white noise. Up above, the blazing stars, brilliant and breathtaking. Beside him, Jim, familiar and solid, pressed up against his side, trembling just slightly in a way that might have nothing to do with the evening chill. It’s like a game, Leonard thinks sometimes, the way Jim keeps bringing it up, over and over and over again, like a touchstone he keeps coming back to when the world moves just too quickly. It’s like when you’re still a kid, asking your parents _would you still love me if…_ and coming up with wilder and wilder scenarios to see how far all that care will stretch, knowing somehow that the answer will always remain the same. 

( _Would you still love me if I left you behind?_ )

( _Would you still love me if I went somewhere you couldn’t follow?_ )

( _Would you still love me if I asked you to come with me anyways?_ )

“But Bones,” Jim says, quiet and small and significant, Jim who’s loomed so large in Leonard’s life ever since crashing into him on a shuttle in Riverside all those months ago through the haze of alcohol and fear and desperation, “I don’t want to do it without you.”

**_iii. and you feel like you’ve done something terrible like robbed a liquor store_ **

_Come on_ , Jim says, instead of something like _it’ll be okay_. _Let’s go_ , instead of _try not to think about it too much_ or _this will pass_ or even _I’m sorry_.

Leonard loses a patient on a Thursday in the summer. It’s not his first time, and he knows it probably won’t be the last, because it’s just the nature of the work, but it’s the first time since his father died, the first time since his whole world ended, the first time since starting anew. Leonard loses a patient, and Jim doesn’t even ask when he picks Leonard up from his shift that day, just takes Leonard by the hand and starts walking, gently pulling him along like he knows, too, that there are some days where your biggest fear is the world coming to a halt. Jim pours Leonard into his car and cranks the music up, letting the steady rhythm of a now familiar, centuries-old song fill the space until it seems to thump through Leonard’s chest, drowning out the pounding of his own heart and making his skin sing. It’s only just past three in the afternoon, but it feels like Leonard’s been up for days, and he lets his eyes fall shut against the bright sunshine still hanging high in the air. The music is loud and the windows are cracked open just a touch and Leonard watches the light flicker by from behind his eyelids, wondering why this all feels so fresh and raw all over again. 

Leonard loses track of how long Jim drives for, but when he opens his eyes again, the sun’s starting to dip low in the sky, dying the clouds a deep red like Leonard will never be able to escape his sins. They’re no longer along the coast, but rather driving through gently rolling hills, the once-green grass already yellowing in the summer air. Leonard remembers moving to the area and marveling at the fact that the cities will still bring out herds of goats to trim back the dry brush instead of something newer, if maybe not simpler. They must be inland, Leonard thinks, where the breeze starts to feel hot, like it really is July instead of the perpetual early-winter chill that lingers around San Francisco, and Jim’s drumming his fingers against the steering wheel and bobbing his head to the beat of the music still blaring through the speakers. Leonard listens to the roar of noise and breathes into ribs sore from worry and wonders how he could possibly have fallen asleep. He looks at the soft set to Jim’s mouth, the easy warmth in his eyes as he looks out at the endless road ahead of them, and wonders how he could ever imagine that it’d be any other way. Jim peeks at Leonard out of the corner of his eye and smiles just a little when he sees that Leonard’s woken up. 

“Hey,” Jim says softly. 

The lump settled in Leonard’s throat hasn’t quite left, painful to breathe around, but his hands, at least, have stopped shaking. 

“Hey,” Leonard says, voice a little hoarse.

Jim’s eyes linger on Leonard for a long moment, contemplative, before he turns them back to the road, and after a beat, he asks quietly, “First time since coming to Starfleet, huh?”

Jim asks it, but it’s not a question, not really, and Leonard wonders if he’s always been that easy to read or if Jim’s just gotten better at it in the span of less than a year than almost anyone else in Leonard’s entire life. 

Leonard draws in a deep breath and settles back against the door, leaning his head against the cool glass of the window. He hitches a leg up to fold under him, his knee bumping Jim’s arm lightly. 

“Yeah,” Leonard says. He rubs at his eyes like it’ll help him get the image of his patient on his operating table out from behind his eyelids, like it’ll get rid of the ache sinking deep into his bones. “Never seems to get easier.”

Jim hums, thoughtful. He rolls down his window all the way and lets a gust of warm air into the car, the heat clinging to the thin cotton of Leonard’s shirt. The wind smells like dry grass and kicks at Leonard’s hair, tickling at his skin like it’s trying to coax something out of him. 

“Good,” Jim says, his voice so low that the word almost gets carried away in the breeze. 

_Good_ , Jim says, and it’s so simple but it feels like a counterweight suddenly dropping down on the other end of the scale, balancing, grounding, like permission, like absolution. Leonard realizes all at once that no one’s ever said anything like that to him before. 

( _Good, feel this, feel human._ )

( _Good, remember how to still be you, even when it’s hard, even when it hurts._ )

“Where are we going?” Leonard asks, the tiniest of tremors sneaking into his voice. He feels pricks at the corners of his eyes and his chest feels tight. He clenches his hands into fists and looks out the window, like can actually see any of the scenery they’re passing by. 

Jim shrugs, eyes trained on the road like he knows Leonard needs him to pretend like he can’t hear that Leonard’s splintering even as he sits perfectly still. 

“Just let me know when to turn back,” Jim says, like he’s giving Leonard the space, the breathing room, like he knows that some days, home can’t feel like home until you’ve gotten far enough away, left enough behind.

Leonard cries, the horizon blurring into a mass of golden tones, the kind of quiet cry that surfaces in fat tears rolling down his cheeks and wobbly breaths without much sound or substance, like all the heaviness needs to find a way out somehow, and Jim for his part doesn’t say anything, just reaches over to rest a hand on Leonard’s knee, squeezing once, gently, as the world rushes by. 

( _Good, I wouldn’t recognize you otherwise._ )

**_iv. or swallowed pills or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you’re tired_ **

Leonard doesn’t drive as often as Jim, doesn’t get that same feeling of eyes-wide-open joy that Jim seems to get from navigating all the little ways to nowhere, but he does drive, sometimes. Like when Jim’s had several nights in a row filled with restless nightmares that send him running across campus to knock on Leonard’s door in the wee hours of the morning seeking some kind of salvation. Like when certain occasions pass and Jim needs to close his eyes and stop up his ears against everything the world is telling him—his birthday, his father’s birthday, the day his brother died. Like when Jim’s worked himself to the bone trying to prove time and time again that he’s more than a knockoff of the memory of a man Starfleet’s made into a hero. 

Leonard drives and lets Jim lean back in his seat, feet propped up on the dashboard, hanging a hand out the window to weave through the wind. Palm out, resistance. Hand flat, the easy flow of air over knuckles. Jim sleeps, sometimes, and talks a lot, others, always about nothing in particular but in a way that only Jim knows how, like he’s slowly building up the layers until a picture emerges, like he’ll step back one day and Leonard will understand the story he’s been trying to tell this whole time through fun facts about the ocean floor, about the very first space explorers, about how stars die when their time is up. 

There’s something about the open road that always seems to bring the lightness back into Jim’s eyes, like he was never meant to stay in one place for too long, like he was always going to spend his life seeking out something new. And every now and again, the first time Jim speaks is to tell Leonard to pull over at a rest stop, leaning across Leonard to point out something in the distance, and Leonard pretends to be annoyed at the way Jim leans into his side and into his field of vision without waiting for the car to stop. A flock of birds diving off the edge of a cliff. A cloud that looks like a starship. So much joy in the little things.

By the time they start heading back, it’s usually late in the day. Leonard feels a drowsiness start to creep up on the edges of his vision and his back aches a little from sitting for so long, but by his side, Jim is loose and free again, unwound after being coiled too tight. Jim offers to drive on the way back, sometimes, lazy eyes landing on the tired lines Leonard knows are starting to get pressed into his brow. Leonard says no, always, says no even as Jim protests, even as Jim points out how Leonard’s eyes are starting to droop, rattles off statistics about how you’re more likely to die in a car than a shuttle, how enough exhaustion is as good as intoxication like Leonard hasn’t spent the past year telling Jim the same thing about getting enough sleep. And Leonard laughs, lets Jim crank the music up as loud as it will go, lets Jim sing along at the top of his lungs, half hanging out the window, lets himself get talked into it, sometimes, too. 

Leonard doesn’t drive as often as Jim, because he’s always been more eager to get home, because he lets out a long breath at the sight of a familiar skyline, at spotting his place to belong in the distance. He doesn’t drive as often as Jim, because in contests of patience for the endless stream of new sights flitting past them, he’s always lost. He doesn’t drive as much as Jim, but when he does, he sometimes wonders, just a little, why he doesn’t more, because Jim smiles at him with shining eyes and tells him stories about going on long road trips with his grandfather and his brother as a kid and getting away from a home that was never really a home, and it’s maybe the happiest Leonard ever sees Jim. 

Jim belongs on the road. Leonard has known this for a long time, maybe ever since they met, Jim sitting next to him on that shuttle like he could bolt at any moment, and Leonard wonders sometimes what that means for them, once they graduate. He wonders if the holding pattern they’ve found themselves in will continue, the two of them wandering just far enough to settle Jim’s antsy nerves, staying just close enough that Leonard doesn’t feel completely unmoored. He wonders where they’ll be assigned. He wonders if Jim would let him stray too far away, if he’d let himself. 

But it’s late in the day, and Leonard’s bones are starting to creak, and he rubs at his tired eyes. He sets his sights on San Francisco gleaming in the distance and drives.

**_v. you’re in a car with a beautiful boy and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him_ **

Jim takes Leonard back to Riverside, once, over winter break during their second year at the Academy. Bundled up in his favorite leather jacket and a thick scarf, Jim takes Leonard from corner to corner of the little town that used to be the beginning and end of his whole world, pointing out fond memories or funny stories or things that are maybe just a little bit sad. 

( _This is where my brother and I put together a haunted corn maze when I was six. This is where I broke my wrist trying to learn how to skateboard when I was nine. This is where I drove my father’s car off a cliff when I was eleven._ )

Jim takes Leonard on the back of his father’s old motorcycle, whizzing down long country roads with cold air biting at their cheeks, expertly dodging ice and puddles like it’s all but second nature. Jim stops at the edge of the old quarry and pauses to look down into the shadows, and in the weak, milky light of winter, his cheeks are rosy and bright. A light dusting of snowflakes clings to his hair, and his breath comes out in white clouds as he tells Leonard the story and laughs at a memory that Leonard suspects isn’t quite as cheery as he makes it out to be, and Leonard wonders, not for the first time, who Jim would’ve turned out to be if things in his life had gone just slightly differently. Would he still have met Jim on that shuttle just over a year ago? Would he still be here now? He wonders, sometimes, what he would’ve done if the answer had been no, if he hadn’t had Jim there with him, battered and bruised and world-weary in a way Leonard couldn’t place at the time among the sea of fresh and shiny faces. He wonders, sometimes, what he would’ve done if the answer had been yes, if that version of Jim would love a little easier, a little more openly. 

They drive and drive and drive, and Jim takes Leonard to all the old places, points to this thing or that and tells all the little stories, and all the while, Leonard looks at Jim, looks at the love and care baked into every gesture, and aches, some unspoken, unknown something right on the tip of his tongue. A soft smile as Jim shows Leonard his favorite ice cream parlor from when he was growing up, never mind that it’s below freezing. Gentle fingers touching down on a worn tombstone bearing his namesake, on the one next to it marking what Leonard knows is an empty grave. A shoulder bumped against his own as the sky darkens and Jim tips his head up to catch the stars twinkling through the clouds. 

They spend the night in the home Jim grew up in, and the whole house creaks with the emptiness in its walls. Leonard wonders how long it’s been since anyone called this place home. He wonders if there’s been anyone inside at all since Jim left to chase a dream. In the morning, they’ll get up bright and early to start boxing the whole house up until a new Kirk comes to claim the land as their own, and Leonard will meet Jim’s mother for the first time and he’ll wonder if Winona Kirk was the person who taught Jim that this—hiding all the aches and pains behind bright eyes and a wide smile, all the thousand unspoken fears, big and small—is the only way to be strong. But for now, it’s almost Christmas, and Jim makes Leonard hot cocoa with multi-colored marshmallows like he and his brother used to when the weather got cold, and the two of them curl up under a pile of thick blankets, sheltering themselves against the chill that seeps in through the cracks in the walls like the house knows that this will be the last night it will be anything but vacant and it’s already trying to fill in the empty space. 

Jim tells Leonard about falling asleep on the stairs with his brother trying to wait up for Santa when he was six, and Leonard tells Jim about the big family reunions that his grandmother would host every year, gathering together all the aunts and uncles and cousins under one roof for a week that always seemed to exist outside of time, untouchable. They trade stories of childhood back and forth like precious stones, _here, take this, see me_ , and Leonard feels heavy and warm and safe. It doesn’t occur to him until he’s right on the edge of sleep that he can’t quite remember the last time he felt this way. He finds himself wondering as he drifts off if this is something that’s his to keep, if this feeling is something that can be replicated, or if this, too, will remain elusive and just out of reach except for just a few days, once a year. 

**_vi. and you’re trying to choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling_ **

When Leonard thinks of shuttles, he thinks of fire and fear, he thinks of splintering cracks in glass and the screech of metal being torn apart, he thinks of being ten years old and losing his mother and his sister and feeling cold and empty as his father tried not to let his son lose him to it all too. When Leonard thinks of shuttles, he thinks about being twenty-eight and having to start his whole life all over again, building it back from the ground up after being so thoroughly shattered, one piece at a time, starting at the bottom of a bottle and ending up next to a man who wound up changing the course of his life forever. When Leonard thinks of shuttles, he thinks of being rooted to the spot with bone-chilling fear, the kind that makes his feet feel like they’re made of lead, thinks of being left behind while the rest of the world hurtles forward and away. 

(It’s a funny thing, he thinks sometimes, how he’s become someone who’s ended up spending so much time on the go and still he doesn’t know if he’ll ever get to where he wants to be, doesn’t even know where that is.)

“Take me up in a shuttle,” Leonard says to Jim one day in the spring. 

The end of the school year looms ever closer, and Jim’s signed up to take the Kobayashi Maru once the summer starts, and he’s asked Leonard to be there with him. It’s just a test, and he’ll have both feet planted firmly on the ground, and it’s not like either of them will be talking about proper assignments for another year, but Leonard thinks about it sometimes and doesn’t know what to make of it. The dread at the thought of flying still hasn’t left Leonard, but when he thinks about it and what it means and what the future holds, there’s something else, too, something that sits unfamiliar and heavy in his stomach, that’s starting to creep up on him. It’s a fear, but it’s a different kind of fear, something Leonard hasn’t had to grapple with in a long, long time. 

“Take me up in a shuttle,” Leonard says, and Jim smiles and starts small. 

They start taking the long way home after class, Jim taking Leonard by the hand to walk him through the length of the hangars, peering in through the shuttle windows at their empty hulls. They have lunch in the shuttle bay one day, sitting cross-legged on the cold metal floor watching as the shuttles all idle around them, waiting to be loaded up and sent out. Jim talks a friend into letting them go inside a shuttle while it’s still docked and explains how the various features work, sits next to Leonard in those uncomfortable seats, side by side like that first day, only now Leonard thinks he’s never been more awake. 

Jim calls in a favor on a Wednesday when Leonard has the day off from work, and he lets Leonard just sit in the shuttle for as long as he needs, tells him stories about the cadets in the hand-to-hand class he’s a teaching assistant for this term until Leonard’s racing heart starts to settle. And then he takes Leonard’s anxious hands in his own and squeezes once, like a promise of things he couldn’t possibly know, before he undocks the shuttle and eases them out into the stratosphere, still holding on to Leonard’s hand between them like an anchor tethering him to solid ground. 

It’s just like driving, Leonard keeps telling himself as Jim takes them on a slow, easy arc through the still air. It’s like all those times Jim has taken them up and down the California coast, riding along Highway 1 with hills stretching up towards the sky on one side and the sharp drop-off of the cliffs on the other. The same swooping feeling of freefalling when Leonard chances a look over the edge. The same feeling of his heart in his throat as Jim rolls the top down and shouts into the wind in delight. 

Except it’s not like driving, and when Leonard looks down, the ground is so much farther away, but Jim is still there by his side, smiling softly at Leonard and letting him grip his hand so hard it must hurt but never once trying to make Leonard let go. It’s not like driving, but Jim’s still at the wheel, murmuring a constant, quiet commentary on the things he sees. A new perspective on an old constellation. The sun cresting over the arc of the globe. A storm gathering in a clump of dark clouds off in the distance a whole ocean away. 

It’s only a handful of minutes until they touch back down again, carefully bumping up against the hangar floor, but it feels like a lifetime, and even though Leonard knows that it’s coming, can feel the panic rising up to the back of his throat, the moment they’re safely on the ground, Leonard collapses, shaking. And he knows that this is a part of it, that if this is what he wants, then he’ll have to reteach his frayed nerves what it means to feel safe again, that there’s nothing to do about it except to do it. But it doesn’t change that his breaths still come out in wobbly gasps and his vision blurs a little around the edges, and Jim holds him, curling his arms around Leonard and tucking the top of Leonard’s head under his chin. His hands on Leonard’s back are steady and warm, and Leonard can feel the rumble through Jim’s chest as he murmurs, _I’m proud of you, I’m proud of you, I’m proud of you_ , and it feels a little like he’s found the beginning of something.

**_vii. but he reaches over and he touches you_ **

“I think we’re lost,” Jim says, but even as he says it, he laughs. 

There’s nothing for miles and miles but an endless sea of grass and wildflowers, and even though it’s still early in the morning, the temperature’s already climbing, starting to stick to Leonard’s skin. Leonard struggles with a stack of folded maps against the wind that blows through the area, wondering how he ever let himself get talked into this (except he knows, he knows, and there’s maybe not a thing in the world he wouldn’t agree to just to see Jim’s bright eyes light up when he says _yes, okay, take me with you_ ). They’re in the middle of nowhere, sans any kind of communication or navigation devices, because maybe Jim wanted to give himself a challenge, because maybe Jim wanted to get a little lost, and Leonard would be angry about it if he didn’t have this unreasonable, unshakable faith that they’ll find their way home eventually, like they always do.

“Yeah, we are,” Leonard says, grumbling even though he knows his expression is probably a shade too fond. It’s been a long time, he thinks, since the last time he managed to summon up any genuine annoyance at Jim’s antics, a long time since he started quietly hoping for moments like this instead. “You gonna help me with this?”

Jim laughs again and wanders over to Leonard, tucking his chin over Leonard’s shoulder to peer at the yellowed map, one hand resting absently on Leonard’s hip and the other reaching around Leonard to help hold the paper flat. His fingertips brush over Leonard’s knuckles, and Leonard wonders if it’s an accident, wonders if anything about Jim could ever be, Jim who never does anything without an intention. Jim hums softly as he looks at the map and points a lazy finger at a thin line running up towards the left corner of the map. 

“We’re here, right?” Jim murmurs, though it sounds mostly like he’s thinking out loud. The corners of his mouth curl up into a sly smile as he traces a winding path through the countryside like it could never be any other way. “Easy.”

The air is hot, and when Leonard peeks over at Jim out of the corner of his eye, he can count each of the many freckles scattered across the bridge of Jim’s nose, tanned and sun-kissed. There’s a version of Jim that Leonard sometimes likes to think that he and he alone knows, this Jim who’s a little quieter and softer around the edges, who never loses any of his boldness but feels lighter, somehow, like he can finally just _be_ once they’ve traveled far enough away from anyone who knows anything about him. This Jim smiles a little easier, carries himself a little looser, so much less brash and showy, like that’s all a costume he has to put on every morning just to get himself out of bed. Leonard thinks he spies it sometimes when they haven’t gone anywhere in the brief moments between sleep and waking, on those mornings after Jim crawls into Leonard’s bed in the dead of night, shivering with the weight of ghosts that will never leave him—on those mornings when Jim’s barely awake and a little hazy but warm and gentle as he rubs the sleep out of his eyes, like there could’ve been a world where he could step into the day this free. Leonard thinks it’s probably his favorite thing in the whole universe.

“You sure?” Leonard asks, folding the map over again but never quite making a real effort to move. The weight of Jim’s chin still rests heavily on his shoulder. “Because I don’t know about you, but I refuse to spend the night in that metal deathtrap you call a car.”

Jim jerks back then and gasps, overwrought and dramatic, like this is all a game, like he knows what Leonard really means to say underneath it all is _I trust you_ or _it’s okay_ or _let’s go and see where it takes us_. Leonard doesn’t know anymore if what he means is this road trip or some bigger journey he feels like he’s been on since setting foot in that shipyard in Riverside, but he supposes, sometimes, it doesn’t really matter in the end. 

“Hey, be nice,” Jim protests, turning to get back into the car. He runs his fingertips along the shiny ridge of the hood of his car, and Leonard thinks he can still feel the phantom touch of them at the small of his back. Jim looks pointedly at Leonard, playful and challenging. “Have I ever let you down?” 

Jim says it like it’s a joke, like this, too, is a game, but Leonard always thinks that he hears a thread of something else too, something a little realer, a little more scared. Leonard always wonders a moment later if he’s just projecting. 

“First time for everything,” Leonard says, even though he really means to say, _no, never, not in a million years_.

Jim laughs like he’s heard it anyways. 

**_viii. like a prayer for which no words exist_ **

For the first term of their third year at the Academy, Jim applies to take a field training course that sees him out of the country or off-world more often than not. Jim beams at Leonard the day he finds out he’s gotten admitted, running up to Leonard in the middle of the main quad to grab him by the shoulders with shaking hands, all bright eyes and blinding grins, and Leonard feels his heart stop, just for a moment. Jim rattles on about all the different things he’ll learn, all the places he’ll go, and Leonard suddenly feels a little like he’s peeking through a window into his future, Jim charging on ahead to bigger and better and newer things, with Leonard scrambling desperately to catch up. 

Before he leaves for the first time, Jim makes Leonard promise to write to him with any news around the Academy, to visit his dorm room once a week to water his plants, to take his car out every now and again to make sure it keeps running smoothly. Jim makes Leonard promise like Jim’s going to be the one left behind if Leonard doesn’t, all of his things gone and forgotten, and Leonard smiles and promises, even as his chest aches at the thought of Jim running out there into the black and never looking back. Jim leaves sometimes for two, three weeks at a time, and sometimes, Leonard finds himself busy enough between classes and schoolwork and shifts at Medical that it seems like no time at all has passed before Jim comes bursting into his room at all hours of the day and night again, laughing and eager. Sometimes, it feels a little like Leonard can feel the exact weight of every minute passing him by. 

Jim sends messages too, while he’s away, detailing things big and small that he’s seen and done, already dreaming about reaching the farthest corners of the known and unknown universe. Leonard wakes up to a new batch of them once or twice a week, and mostly the messages are short, observations of interesting new things Jim’s learning, complaints about classmates, weird dreams he’s been having, like Jim’s just rattling off his thoughts like he always does when he thinks of something worth sharing, like it’s a compulsion, like it’s not real if he can’t tell someone. Leonard wakes up these mornings feeling a little like his skin is two sizes too small, antsy and restless, and he finds himself grabbing his PADD and Jim’s keys and driving and driving until the mid-day sun starts to burn at his eyes. He races up and down the California coast, retracing the journeys that Jim’s taken him on—up north towards Mount Shasta, down south to where the ocean water starts to turn a little warmer. He drives until he gets hungry and then he stops for a bite and leans back on the hood of Jim’s car and reads against the backdrop of the Pacific Ocean. 

( _The guy I’m bunking with snores like crazy. You’re a much better roommate._ )

( _You know, with how much Starfleet hypes up hand-to-hand, you’d think we’d see a bit more excitement out here._ )

( _We flew through the Ring Nebula today. It was gorgeous. You would’ve loved it._ )

Leonard reads with the autumn sun baking his shoulders, and as he reads all the little, often inconsequential things Jim sends his way, all the little things that make up Jim as a person—so curious and bright, so easily pleased if you know how to look, what to ask—Leonard finds himself smiling, warm and comforted. He imagines Jim telling him all these stories with shining eyes and wild gestures to get his point across just right, and he stares out across the glittering ocean surface to where it meets the sky and feels a sort of peace settle in his chest. When he arrives back in San Francisco, the sun is dipping low in the sky and the first stars are starting to peek through the settling darkness, and Leonard wonders what the view is like from way up there, sends out a little wish to the universe to bring Jim back to him in one piece so maybe Jim can show him someday. 

When Jim arrives back from his last trip, Leonard drives out to meet him. It’s gotten chilly in the time Jim’s been away, though after two years of living here Leonard still can’t quite get used to the absence of a real autumn, and Leonard’s bundled up in a cozy sweater that Jim likes to steal from him sometimes, glad that it didn’t end up leaving with Jim this time. Jim, when Leonard spots him, looks tired but happy, like maybe he’s found a little of what he’s been looking for while he’s been away, and Jim’s expression lights up when his eyes land on Leonard. Leonard lifts his hand to wave a little as Jim weaves his way through the crowd, half-jogging to throw himself into Leonard’s arms, dropping his bags carelessly to the ground. Jim’s laugh is bright and familiar in Leonard’s ear, and his hands are warm on Leonard’s back, and Leonard finds himself holding on maybe just a little too tightly, just a little too long. 

But then, Jim looks at Leonard, arms still looped lazily around Leonard’s neck, and he shakes his head a little in disbelief. 

“I can’t believe you came to pick me up,” he says, a kind of wonder in his voice that makes Leonard’s chest ache wondering how something so small, so simple, can still be such a novelty. 

There are probably a thousand things Leonard could say, a thousand jokes he could make to deflect from the way his heart stutters uncertainly in his chest, a thousand ways Jim would let him get away with it, but Jim’s smiling at him like Leonard’s given him the world, and so Leonard just smiles back and says softly, “Welcome home.”

**_ix. and you feel your heart taking root in your body_ **

After everything—after being thrown into the ring too suddenly and racing to save the world from a madman from a reality they’ll never know and realizing that there are fears out there in the great wide universe that are bigger than all the small things Leonard has kept tucked inside his ribcage his entire life—after it all, returning back to San Francisco and the Academy and the mundane feels raw and almost painful, like the whole world is just a little too sharp, all its edges a little too in focus. Settling back in is hard, like Leonard might never really return to his real life, and Leonard wakes up every morning for the entire week after it all with his heart in his throat and images of wreckage flashing behind his eyelids like lightning. Jim hasn’t been back to his own room at all since they touched back down on Earth, crawling into Leonard’s bed to curl up against his back each night, and Leonard knows what it means, knows that Jim’s mind probably still hasn’t quite calmed down, thoughts racing and racing and racing until his body mercifully lets him pass out in the wee hours of the morning, and Leonard doesn’t know how to fix it and it hurts. 

About a week in, Leonard wakes up in the morning to an empty bed for the first time since coming back to Earth and finds a note waiting for him on his nightstand, telling him to come outside in Jim’s neat, all-caps handwriting. It’s early in the morning still, but Jim has always been an early riser where Leonard has always preferred nights, and when Leonard makes his way out of his dorm and to the street, Jim’s already there waiting, leaning back against his car with his hands in his pockets. The air is cold and a sharp breeze rustles at Jim’s hair, and it’s almost like every other time Jim’s woken him up to take him somewhere new, almost like it’s still their _before_ , except that Leonard can see the dark circles under Jim’s eyes, can see the weary slump of Jim’s shoulders and Leonard’s whole body aches.

“Not enough adventure for you lately?” Leonard asks, like he maybe would have before, except his voice comes out more soft than teasing. 

The corner of Jim’s mouth turns up into a small smile. “Never,” he says, all the bravado and bluster he puts on stripped away in favor of just this, Jim looking at Leonard like he’s still searching for solid ground. 

Leonard lets Jim drive them away from San Francisco and doesn’t bother asking where they’re going, just leans back in his seat and lets the wind whip at his hair through the open window. The silhouette of Jim’s face is outlined by the pale light of early morning, sunlight shrouded in thick fog, and as Jim drives, he’s got his mouth pressed into a thin line, tense and anxious, and he’s gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles are starting to turn white. Leonard knows he should say something but doesn’t know what, doesn’t know how to soothe away the kind of shock and loss that he himself is still trying to wrap his head around. Too much has happened in too little time, and Leonard looks at the tired lines around Jim’s eyes and frowns. 

As the familiar city skyline fades into the distance behind them, Jim driving forever northward through winding, hilly roads, Jim’s shoulders start to relax, just a little, and Leonard feels like he can breathe again. Somewhere just past Point Reyes, Jim reaches out his right hand to search out one of Leonard’s, careful fingers sliding over waiting palm, tracing the lines of Leonard’s hand like he’s looking for answers, like he’s still asking the world _why_. 

( _Why did this all happen? Why hasn’t the ground beneath my feet started to feel real yet? Why me?_ )

Leonard clasps their hands together, lacing his fingers with Jim’s. The pad of his thumb rests lightly on Jim’s wrist and he can feel the hummingbird flap of Jim’s pulse just under his skin. 

“Jim,” Leonard says softly, just over the hum of the engine. Jim doesn’t look at him, but his grip on Leonard’s hand tightens, just so. “Jim, pull over.”

There’s a gravelly turnoff just ahead where Jim pauses, turns in his seat as the car idles with wide eyes, and Leonard marvels at the amount of concern Jim always manages to summon, even when he’s too exhausted to care for himself. 

“What?” Jim asks. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

There’s a faint tremor of panic in Jim’s voice, and Leonard wonders how long Jim will remain this on edge, wonders how long it’ll be before he stops feeling like he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

“Yeah,” Leonard says quietly, “Yeah, I’m fine. It’s okay.”

It’s almost a lie, because Leonard thinks that it’ll probably be weeks and weeks until _fine_ becomes a concept that makes sense again, but it’s also maybe not a lie in a way that matters. The weight of Jim’s palm sits firmly in Leonard’s hand, familiar and grounding, and Jim stares at him with wide eyes like he’s afraid the ground will drop out from underneath them if he looks away, and Leonard thinks to himself that maybe things happen for a reason. Staying on that shuttle in Riverside instead of running away screaming. Jim coming to him all hours of the night again and again and again when the world gets just a little too big. Deciding on a whim to drag Jim out into the black, consequences be damned, because it was always supposed to have been the other way around. 

Leonard lifts his hand to cup Jim’s jaw and leans across the console and kisses him. Jim draws in a small, sharp breath and his hand in Leonard’s trembles, just a little, but he leans into Leonard’s touch and kisses him and kisses him and kisses him. Jim kisses him like he’s drowning and Leonard is the only dry land left, like he’s been waiting for something, holding his breath. Leonard thinks that he’s probably shaking a little too, but for the first time since coming back to Earth, it feels like maybe there’s still room left over for good things in the world, and it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay. 

Jim stares at Leonard with wide eyes when they pull away, and the look on his face is something Leonard’s never seen before. He looks like he’s finally found the answers to some of the endless questions constantly swirling around in his head. He looks like he might cry.

Leonard leans his forehead against Jim’s, one hand resting on the back of Jim’s neck, fingers running through the soft, short hair there, and he asks quietly, “Hey, you okay?”

Jim’s breath comes out a little unsteadily and his eyes are a little glassy and he maybe hasn’t stopped shivering since they stopped driving, but the corner of his mouth turns up into a small smile, and Leonard thinks with relief that it’s the realest thing he’s seen all day. 

“Yeah,” Jim says, leaning back in to press his mouth to Leonard’s again, a lie but not quite, not in a way that means anything. “Yeah, I’m good.”

**_x. like you’ve discovered something you don’t even have a name for._ **

Bright sunshine pours down from clear sky, flashing off of buildings and cars below, making the Golden Gate almost, if Leonard squints, almost look as golden as it claims to be. The warm light of late afternoon bathes the view from the Headlands, making it almost seem like real summer, even though the usual chill still clings to the air and Leonard’s still bundled up in a jacket. Jim’s standing behind Leonard, chin tucked over Leonard’s shoulder and arms around Leonard and hands in Leonard’s pockets. Jim, who’s like a human space-heater except his hands and feet, which are always cold. Jim, who starting tomorrow will get his first real shot at being a captain. 

“I’m going to miss this view,” Leonard murmurs, trying to settle the way his nerves constantly swing back and forth between anxious about going out into the black again and oddly calm with some sense that whatever happens, he’s already made it through the worst of it. 

Jim hums. “We’ll be back in a few months,” he says easily, even though he knows that it’s not really what Leonard means. His mouth slides into a playful smile and he says, “You’re not getting cold feet on me now, are you? I don’t think I’ll be able to find another CMO in time for takeoff.”

Leonard laughs and then a moment later, marvels at how, three years after the fact, this has become a thing he’s able to joke about and laughs some more. A hawk above them rides an updraft of heated air, hovering almost motionlessly for a long moment before plunging back down along the cliff face below them, unencumbered and unafraid and free. Leonard leans back a little into Jim’s chest, feeling warm and safe despite the cool air blowing around them, despite what Leonard knows lies in his immediate future, despite everything. 

“You excited?” Jim asks, and Leonard can feel Jim’s eyes on him, Jim leaning his head to one side to rest his cheek on Leonard’s shoulder. Jim smiles. “This is gonna be one hell of a road trip.”

Leonard laughs again and shakes his head, squinting at how the light bounces off of shiny buildings in the distance, twinkling like miniature starbursts. The world feels so big and bright, and tomorrow, he’s going to leave it all behind for the unknown. 

“Only you would call something like this a road trip,” Leonard says, only sounding about half as exasperated as he tries for. He thinks to himself that he’s probably smiling a little too widely to really be convincing anyways. 

Jim gasps, playing along, always, trying to needle more affection out of Leonard. It’s a game, Leonard thinks sometimes, but it’s one that he’s grown rather fond of playing. 

( _Please, just one more smile, one more laugh, one more warm look before you go._ )

“Oh, come on,” Jim says, and he sounds petulant, but there’s an edge of a laugh sneaking into his voice like he doesn’t really mean it. “You love road trips.”

Leonard’s quiet for a moment. He thinks about it sometimes, in the lulls between the bursts of action that have come to comprise his life, thinks about how his whole life, he’s always thought of himself as someone who clings to the notion of _home_ , who seeks out the feeling of being grounded and stable above all else. He thinks about how he often finds in his new life that the world wheels wildly around him, uncontrolled and unexpected and uncontained, about all the things he’s thought _never, ever, ever_ about and then gone and done anyways because it wouldn’t have felt right to leave things unfinished. He’s sometimes a little surprised to find that it doesn’t leave him feeling off-kilter, the way he feels sometimes like he’s sprinting after some unknown something in the distance, racing to see where this next journey will take him, no finish line ever in sight. He thinks about the crunch of tires on dirt road and the smell of dry grass in the summer and the sound of Jim’s laugh in his ear as they speed off to somewhere new, thinks about the bright blur of stars racing past him as he hurtles forward in endless space, and he thinks to himself that maybe it’s not so surprising that he’s found home again this way, that maybe home has always been more of a feeling, a person rather than a place. 

Leonard lets out a small huff of a laugh and smiles, closing his eyes against the warm sun pouring down on them. He wonders what sunset will feel like under the light of a new star.

“I love _you_ ,” Leonard says softly, just over the wind around them and the crash of the waves against the shore below them. “Everything else is just… icing.”

Leonard hears Jim draw in a small, short breath, and Jim goes very quiet, the kind of quiet that Jim alone summons out of everyone Leonard’s ever met. Jim, who’s almost constantly in motion, his mind always three steps ahead of wherever he is, searching perpetually for the next thing. Jim, who stills like this sometimes like Leonard is the center of his entire universe. 

Leonard opens his eyes again and turns to find Jim looking at him with one of those rare, soft smiles tugging his mouth, the one that gathers at the corners of his eyes and eases the tension in his shoulders. The first time Jim smiled at Leonard like this, Leonard had found himself wondering if in another universe, there exists a Jim who always smiles like this, without fear or reservation, open and warm and unafraid of what might come next. Leonard used to find himself wondering what his life would’ve been like, if he’d met that version of Jim instead of this one. But this Jim smiles at Leonard like he’d never stop if he didn’t have to and tugs Leonard closer by his jacket pockets, leaning his forehead against Leonard’s. 

“Yeah?” Jim says, and it’s been months since Jim became his and he Jim’s (for keeps this time, Leonard hopes, dreams, swears he will make happen), but Jim’s voice still comes out sounding a little small, a kind of wonder that someone could love him like this, and it still makes Leonard’s chest ache, thinking about the kind of world their version of the universe has been to make even these tiny kindnesses seem so significant. 

Leonard slides his hands around Jim’s waist, bumping Jim’s nose lightly with his own. “Yeah,” he says quietly.

The look on Jim’s face is almost achingly sweet as he leans in to press a soft kiss to Leonard’s mouth, and Leonard can almost hear all the little things Jim has never really had the words for, all the things Jim’s never gotten the practice at saying, opting instead for small gestures like this, kissing Leonard like he’s making a promise, and this, lifting hands that for more than twenty years had grown accustomed to nothing but violence to run gently along the curve of Leonard’s jaw with so much care, and this, laughing and scrunching up his nose as Leonard peppers his face with kisses, feeling silly and sappy. Jim smiles at Leonard with a kind of warmth that rivals the brilliant reds and pinks and golds cast around them by the setting sun, and these days, Leonard thinks to himself that he wouldn’t trade this version of reality for anything at all.

**Author's Note:**

> lmao can you tell I’m from the bay area??? 
> 
> anyway thank you so very much for reading! any comments/kudos are always so very appreciated!
> 
> come find me on [tumblr](https://drbonesmccoy.tumblr.com/) if you like!


End file.
